Aux armes, mes braves - those Arabs are revolting again. And our bold Legionnaires must try to defeat them in the desert, or perish in the attempt. Armed with a plot about Legionnaires defiling ancient Moroccan tombs and incurring the wrath of the Arabs in the post-World War One period, director Dick Richards (who recaptured the Old West in The Culpepper Cattle Co) tries to show the Foreign Legion warts and all, without completely destroying its myth. A pity, then, that the dialogue, clichéd from the start (a woman starts singing La Marseillaise as battered Legionnaires return from the war, and Major Gene Hackman grunts `There are no heroes in war - only survivors'), gives him only rubber bullets for ammunition. Terence Hill, Max Von Sydow, Ian Holm (improbably blacked up as an Arab chief) and Catherine Deneuve (as the inevitable mystery woman) are among those making a last stand against the assaults of David Zelag Goodman's script.

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